Dillard, Presiding Judge. Following a trial by jury, Dusty Spratlin was convicted of criminal trespass. On appeal from this conviction, Spratlin argues the trial court erred by admitting evidence of testimonial statements made by the deceased victim. And because the trial court failed to conduct a proper analysis under Crawford v. Washington[1] before admitting the complained-of statements, we vacate the trial court’s judgment and remand the case for additional proceedings consistent with this opinion.[2] Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict,[3] the record shows that on January 26, 2020, Athens-Clarke County law enforcement officers responded to an incident at the home of Rosa Pearson, who was Spratlin’s long-term partner and the mother of his two children. Pearson called 911 because, while she was pulling into her driveway, Spratlin shot the windshield of her van with a BB gun, leaving the windshield damaged with holes and cracks. Pearson—who was accompanied in the vehicle by one of the couple’s children—immediately drove away from the scene and called the police. In that 911 call, Pearson relayed that Spratlin fired a pellet gun at her vehicle, dropped the gun in the yard, and left the scene on foot. Officers arrived at the home approximately six minutes later, before Pearson returned. Then, when Pearson arrived, the statements she made about the incident to law enforcement were captured on the body cameras of two officers. The officers were unable to locate Spratlin at that time, but apprehended him several hours later when a relative who lived on the same street as Pearson reported that he was at her home. Spratlin was later indicted and tried on two counts of aggravated assault (family violence) and one count of criminal trespass. At trial, the child who was in the van when Spratlin fired the gun did not testify. And tragically, Pearson passed away (from unrelated natural causes) just weeks after the incident in question. As a result, because Pearson was unavailable to testify, the State sought to admit her 911 call and the body-camera footage as non-testimonial “excited utterances.” Spratlin objected on the grounds that, inter alia, the statements were both inadmissible hearsay and violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[4] Specifically, as to the Confrontation Clause arguments, Spratlin asserted that the statements made during the 911 call and recorded on the officers’ body cameras were all testimonial in nature because there was no ongoing emergency when Pearson called 911 or when she returned to the scene. Following a pretrial hearing, the trial court ruled that Pearson’s statements on the 911 recording and body camera footage were admissible as excited utterances.[5] Spratlin then asked the trial court to “address the proffer in the [C]onfrontation [C]lause,” noting that the hearsay objection and Confrontation Clause objection were two separate and distinct issues. The trial court then responded as follows: “I think my ruling overrides your argument that the [C]onfrontation [C]lause overrides [sic] the issue that the statements need to be excluded because they are excited utterances, and I’m just denying your motion. . . I’m finding that the [C]onfrontation [C]lause arguments do not apply in this case.” Spratlin was ultimately convicted by the jury on the single count of criminal trespass but acquitted on the two counts of aggravated assault. Following that conviction, he filed a motion for new trial. And at the motion-for-new-trial hearing, the trial court, once again, considered Spratlin’s argument that the 911 call recording and body-camera footage were admitted in violation of the Confrontation Clause. More specifically, Spratlin asserted the trial court conflated the hearsay analysis and Confrontation Clause analysis during its pretrial consideration of the arguments against admission of the evidence. To its credit, in responding to this argument, the State acknowledged that a Confrontation Clause analysis and hearsay analysis are two separate and distinct questions. The trial court denied Spratlin’s motion for new trial. And again, on the question of the admissibility of Pearson’s statements on the 911 recording and in the body-camera footage, the trial court concluded that they “were not violations of the Confrontation Clause . . . because each of the statements satisfied the excited utterances exception to the Georgia hearsay rule.” In doing so, the trial court reasoned that when the challenged statements were made, Pearson “was still under the stress of excitement from her interaction with the Defendant[.]” This appeal follows. Spratlin, once again, argues Pearson’s statements on the 911 recording and body-camera footage were improperly admitted into evidence by the trial court. And in response, the State claims the trial court properly concluded that this evidence falls squarely within an exception to the hearsay rule as excited utterances; but as to application of the Confrontation Clause, the State notes that “the trial court never appears to have either conducted a full Confrontation Clause analysis or rendered a distinct ruling on whether Pearson’s statements were testimonial.” Indeed, the State concedes that before and after trial, the trial court “appears to have conflated its assessment of hearsay with its Confrontation Clause analysis”—a concession the State repeated at oral argument before this Court.[6] Because the trial court indeed conflated its hearsay analysis with an analysis of Spratlin’s Confrontation Clause arguments, as applied to the 911 recording and body-camera footage, we cannot discern whether it abused its discretion in concluding this evidence was admissible.[7] And as a result, we must vacate the trial court’s judgment and remand for it to consider the issue anew, separating its hearsay and Confrontation Clause analyses.[8] The Confrontation Clause of the United States Constitution “imposes an absolute bar to admitting outofcourt statements in evidence when they are testimonial in nature, and when the defendant does not have an opportunity to crossexamine the declarant.”[9] And if the primary purpose of a statement is “to establish evidence that could be used in a future prosecution,” that statement is testimonial in nature.[10] Importantly, only after a court determines that a statement is nontestimonial in nature do the “normal rules regarding the admission of hearsay apply.”[11] In a Confrontation Clause analysis, statements are nontestimonial in nature when made in “the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency.”[12] Then, if the answer to that question is “yes,” the court proceeds to consider the admissibility of statements under an exception to the hearsay rule.[13] But here, the trial court only considered the statements in question under a hearsay analysis and, using its conclusion that the statements were admissible as “excited utterances,”[14] it also found the Confrontation Clause did not bar admission of the statements. It erred in doing so. In light of the trial court’s failure to first separately conduct a Confrontation Clause analysis before determining whether the statements in the 911 call and body-camera recordings were admissible under an exception to the hearsay rules, we vacate the trial court’s judgment and remand for it to consider these issues in a manner consistent with this opinion.[15] Judgment vacated and case remanded for further proceedings. Mercier and Markle, JJ., concur.
